A framework for the protection of mobile agents against malicious hosts

The mobility attribute of a mobile agent implies deployment thereof in untrustworthy environments, which introduces malicious host threats. The research question deals with how a security framework could be constructed to address the mentioned threats without introducing high costs or restraining the mobile agent's autonomy or performance. Available literature have been studied, analysed and discussed. The salient characteristics as well as the drawbacks of current solutions were isolated. Through this knowledge a dynamic mobile agent security framework was defined. The framework is based on the definition of multiple security levels, depending on type of deployment environment and type of application. A prototype was constructed and tested and it was found to be lightweight and efficient, giving developers insight into possible security threats as well as tools for maximum protection against malicious hosts. The framework outperformed other frameworks / models as it provides dynamic solutions without burdening a system with unnecessary security gadgets and hence paying for it in system cost and performanceComputingD.Phil

Context-Aware Voip congestion control service

Published in The African Journal of Information and Communication, Issue no 11 2010/2011IP networks can have difficulty coping with delay-sensitive VoIP traffics during emergency situations caused by fires and related disasters. During emergencies there is a huge increase in voice and video traffic, causing a huge strain on the network. The strain on the network is as a result of both essential and non-essential traffic. In such crisis situations, calls originating from or destined for rescue personnel, such as doctors and police, are considered essential. Any other calls from eyewitnesses and the public are considered non-essential, since they degrade the quality of service for the emergency response teams by consuming the scarce network resources. Providing the rescue team with the quality of service that they require necessitates network access restriction for non-essential traffic. In this paper, the authors present a voice and video service that uses Context-Awareness and Semantic Web technologies to restrict network access to privileged users during crisis situations. The service monitors the network for crisis conditions, enables the network to respond appropriately when a crisis occurs, detects the end of the crisis and reverts to its default state.IP networks can have difficulty coping with delay-sensitive VoIP traffics during emergency situations caused by fires and related disasters. During emergencies there is a huge increase in voice and video traffic, causing a huge strain on the network. The strain on the network is as a result of both essential and non-essential traffic. In such crisis situations, calls originating from or destined for rescue personnel, such as doctors and police, are considered essential. Any other calls from eyewitnesses and the public are considered non-essential, since they degrade the quality of service for the emergency response teams by consuming the scarce network resources. Providing the rescue team with the quality of service that they require necessitates network access restriction for non-essential traffic. In this paper, the authors present a voice and video service that uses Context-Awareness and Semantic Web technologies to restrict network access to privileged users during crisis situations. The service monitors the network for crisis conditions, enables the network to respond appropriately when a crisis occurs, detects the end of the crisis and reverts to its default state

Context-aware VoIP congestion control service

IP networks can have difficulty coping with delay-sensitive VoIP traffics during emergency situations caused by fires and related disasters. During emergencies there is a huge increase in voice and video traffic, causing a huge strain on the network. The strain on the network is as a result of both essential and non-essential traffic. In such crisis situations, calls originating from or destined for rescue personnel, such as doctors and police, are considered essential. Any other calls from eyewitnesses and the public are considered non-essential, since they degrade the quality of service for the emergency response teams by consuming the scarce network resources. Providing the rescue team with the quality of service that they require necessitates network access restriction for non-essential traffic. In this paper, the authors present a voice and video service that uses Context-Awareness and Semantic Web technologies to restrict network access to privileged users during crisis situations. The service monitors the network for crisis conditions, enables the network to respond appropriately when a crisis occurs, detects the end of the crisis and reverts to its default state

iSemServ: A model-driven approach for developing semantic web services

The benefits of incorporating Semantic Web Services in web applications are well documented. However, both the real-world implementation and adoption of these services are still rather limited in practice. This is despite the promises that extend syntactic Web services with capabilities such as automatic service discovery, composition, and execution. Some of the barriers to the real-world implementation are the complexities and tool support related to the development of Semantic Web Services. In this article, the main challenge that is addressed is the tight coupling of existing Semantic Web Services (SWS) development platforms to specific semantic description languages and service description languages, which unintentionally lead to unbending service development environments. The main contribution in this article is therefore a model-driven approach called iSemServ that exploits mature technologies, such as UML, and model-transformation techniques for simplifying and semi-automating the development of SWS using description languages of choice, such as Web Ontology Language for Services (OWL-S) and Web Application Description Language (WADL). A design science research methodology was employed in conducting the study. The suggested approach was practically implemented as an Eclipse plug-in and evaluated based on a real-world use case scenario and comparative analysis of related solutions. The evaluation results show that our proposed solution is relevant and appropriate in aiding the semi-automatic development of SWS, albeit with a number of limitations that could be addressed by extending the proposed practical solution